Media allowed to reproduce images of flag-draped coffins

The number of soldiers who have given their lives in Iraq and Afghanistan is 4,253. As each soldier returns home, their bodies lay in coffins that are flown back to the U.S. through Dover Air Force Base in Delaware. We have not been permitted to see those flag-draped coffins because of a Pentagon ban on media coverage that dates back 18 years to the George H. W. Bush presidency. The media, it was thought, would use these images in a malignant way instead of honoring the dead. This week, after an announcement by Defense Secretary Robert Gates, the ban officially ends.